There's something very right about Robert de Niro's new career as a comic actor. With 5 academy awards for best actor in Cape Fear (1991), Awakenings (1990), Raging Bull (1980), The Deer Hunter, (1978), and Taxi Driver (1976) plus a Best Supporting Actor award for The Godfather: Part II, (1974) De Niro has certainly done his time and made his mark on the film industry. You get the feeling he's indulging in a retirement of sorts, one where he gets to have some fun.

His latest comic vehicle is "Meet the Parents" where he plays Jack, who's daughter Pam, is being wooed by a male nurse with an unfortunate name, played by Ben Stiller. De Niro is perfect in the role of overly protective father, often parodying his earlier roles as tough guy. In "Meet the Parents" he's a retired CIA agent, who has kept a few tokens of his trade in a hidden room off the den.

Stiller is the perfect foil for De Niro. At the outset, he's just a regular nice guy who is trying to win Pam, the woman of his dreams. He spends the weekend at Pam's family home in Long Island, in part to celebrate the wedding of Pam's sister, but mostly to ask Jack for permission to marry Pam. But things start to go wrong for Greg, a small lie leads to a more hideous one, and so it goes. Although his role is rather too much like the role he played in "There's Something About Mary," it's still all very funny, and Stiller's incredulous victim face is very appealing.

Director Jay Roach puts together a film that works on many levels. First up, it's just plain funny. There are many laugh out loud moments that have good comic timing, and an adequate script. But the main reason that it works, is that it touches on the human condition so very nicely. Who doesn't have horror stories about meeting the parents? Of the few lucky stories of those who manage it well, there are many many tales of woe about meeting the folks for the first time.

Meet the Parents takes that elemental human fear and explodes it a hundred fold. As such, many of the situations do often feel rather predictable, if you can see where the storyline is heading, just imagine the worst possible scenario and it won't be long before it unfolds. Yet it all works admirably.

I very much enjoyed "Meet the Parents."


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